Eternal Winter
by Hyaenaa
Summary: Snow is beautiful to look at. It's entrancing, with it's intricate patterns and designs. But you mustn't touch it, because the moment you do, it will melt beneath your fingers. Kyle Broflovski is Eric Cartman's snow.


**Eternal Winter**

* * *

South Park is always cold.

Sometimes there are warm summers that drench the town in humidity, but even then, Eric Cartman is always cold.

He's been told that his fat will always keep him warm, and that's just about the only advantage it has to him. He forgot who had said that to him, but he remembered that he threw a rock at them and it broke their nose.

Eric Cartman is always cold.

He wonders when the eternal winter of his soul will pass, but it never seems to. It seems like the seasons within Eric Cartman never change, that he is stuck being this huddling mess of icy displeasure.

His friends - well, they're not really his friends, but they all hang out together even if they don't really get along - they don't seem to notice his predicament. Middle school is a pain in the ass. He hates being fourteen, and he doesn't think his friends hate it nearly as much as he does. Somehow he feels like being mean to them is the only thing that keeps him connected to them. Especially Kyle.

"Hey Kyle, did you do the chemistry homework?" Stan Marsh asked his friend sheepishly. "I was up all night, texting Wendy..."

Kyle Broflovski sighs but hands his homework over to his friend while Eric Cartman watches his bony, pale fingers as they skid across the paper. Kyle Broflovski's skin is white, like snow.

Eric Cartman feels a shudder run down his spine.

"I can't believe it's already fucking December," he murmurs into his sleeve as he lays his head on the desk.

Kyle sends him a surprised, yet skeptical glance. "I thought you liked December, Cartman. Isn't Christmas your favorite holiday or some shit?"

Something in Eric feels a bit warmer at the concept of Kyle remembering those little details about him. Kyle is the only one that can make him feel this way.

Kenny snickers and mumbles something that implies he thought it would have been Thanksgiving, since Cartman was so fat. The warmth from Eric fades and he kicks Kenny's chair from beneath his desk, sending it sliding out from under him and the orange clad boy sprawling into the ground. Kenny glares at him and Eric barks out a forced laugh. Bringing pain to his friends doesn't hold the same joy it did when he was ten.

Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Clyde Donovan smiling at his antics. At least it brought joy to someone else.

As he walks through the hallway, trailing dismally behind his apparent friends, he vaguely catches something about Stan having invited Wendy to the Christmas dance. Suddenly, Eric Cartman hates being fourteen years old more than ever, especially when he looks at Kyle's soft features beneath the bright school light as a smile graces his pale, warm face.

He kicks Kyle Broflovski in the back of his knee, sending him tripping into Rebecca Cotswalds, who gasps and struggles to sort of catch him.

Kyle sends her a thankful look before he turns around to glare deeply at Eric. "What the Hell was that for, fat-ass?"

Cartman sends him a bitter grin. "Just keeping you on your toes, Jew fag."

Kyle whips his hand out to smack Eric up the side of the head, and for a moment, Eric feels the warmth of Kyle's hand graze his freezing skin. He smiles, even as a red mark forms against his cheek and temple, and pushes Kyle out of the way before strutting in the direction of his next class.

Being mean to Kyle isn't as thrilling as it used to be. He doesn't like it anymore, but having Kyle's attention is the only thing that makes him feel warm, and being cold is much worse than being mean to Kyle.

He's been feeling like this for years now.

Eric doesn't think that the problem has to do with him being fourteen, not really, even if it's an easy thing to blame it on. He's been cold and miserable for a long time, and he hated being thirteen and twelve and ten and nine, too. He's starting to think that maybe he just hates _being_.

That scares him, it makes his veins freeze.

Clyde sits next to him in history class, and Eric feels the Donovan kid glance over at him every so often while the teacher drones on about the Civil War and other things that Eric doesn't care about. He really doesn't care about anything that doesn't make him any warmer, which in extension, might mean the only thing he cares about is Kyle Broflovski.

When Eric gets home, he lays in his bed and stares listlessly at the ceiling, feeling it's blank emptiness pervade his emotions. He hates this feeling.

He calls up Kyle and asks him to come over. Kyle declines, but it's worth the few seconds of hearing his voice, even if Kyle is screaming insults at him. It makes him feel alive.

He's worried about what would happen if he stopped being mean to Kyle.

He thinks that if he tries a different angle, the bit of closeness he has to Kyle would fade altogether and he'd start to mean nothing to him at all. He's worried that if he reaches out to touch the snow of Kyle's skin, it might melt against his touch, because Kyle makes him warm and yet Kyle is just like snow.

Snow is beautiful to look at. It's entrancing, with it's intricate patterns and designs. But you mustn't touch it, because the moment you do, it will melt beneath your fingers. Kyle Broflovski is Eric Cartman's snow.

Eric Cartman pelts a water balloon at Kyle during first period. Kyle kicks him in the stomach and punches him in the nose, and although he feigns fighting back, Eric lets him, because the contact beneath their skin is good enough to sate Eric for a little bit longer.

He likes being warm.

Eric surmises that maybe if he moves away from South Park, he'll be warmer, and that maybe it's just the freezing climate of Colorado that's destroying him. But he's worried that the cold will follow him wherever he goes, and that maybe all attempts at escape are futile.

Cartman is about to give Kyle some cookies with a great deal of laxatives in them, claiming that they're an apology present. He knows Kyle will never accept, but it's worth the thought. It's a few days after the water balloon incident and a few days before the Christmas dance.

Eric doesn't want to think about the dance.

He goes to Kyle's locker that Wednesday morning, but stops in his tracks when he sees Kyle leaning up against his locker with Rebecca Cotswalds. They draw in for a quick kiss, and he looks away with a bright blush on his face, a goofy grin rupturing across his lips.

The tin holding the cookies clatters to the floor loudly, but Kyle doesn't seem to notice, and that makes Eric feel even worse when he doesn't look down the hallway to see Eric's heart breaking.

"Um," a bleary, nasally voice tries to break in through his trembling mind. "Are you okay?"

Eric doesn't turn to face the person, his eyes blazing with horror as they stare down Kyle and Rebecca flirting.

Clyde Donovan begins to pick up some of the fallen cookies and put them back in the tin, before he sort of awkwardly holds it, waiting for Eric to take it from his hands. "Um," he repeats uncomfortably.

Eric walks away, not even bothering to take the cookies back from Clyde Donovan.

He doesn't come to school for the next two days, and then it's Saturday, the day of the Christmas dance.

He feels stupid while his mother coos over his little tuxedo, adorning his chubby body and taking pictures just before she sends him on his way. It's a middle school dance which meant that all the kids would be treating it as though it was a high school dance, because middle school kids wanted to be high school kids, but Eric didn't really care. For once he felt like he wasn't the only one who hated being fourteen.

He stares at the school building, looming from the outside, and snow trails from the sky, swirling around his brown hair and fluttering to the pavement below. Never before has the school looked so intimidating as it has now, with the cheerful Christmas lights lining the doorway and the balloons that hung from each side.

When he enters, it's a mix of darkness and flashing lights. The DJ is trying way too hard to appeal to the kids and make them feel like high schoolers, but the kids take what they can get and dance along anyway. Eric doesn't bother with the dance floor, and instead stands at the snack bar, stuffing his face.

"Hey dude, I didn't know you'd be here."

Eric turns to see Stan Marsh, arm in arm with Wendy Testaburger. She smiles at him gently. Wendy might not like him, but she's nice enough that she won't treat him poorly unless confronted. Sometimes, on nights like these, Eric appreciates that about her.

He shrugs. "I came for the food." Is his only comment, as he obnoxiously pushes a piece of bread into his waiting mouth.

Wendy nods at this. "Try the oatmeal cookies. Bebe made them and they're really good."

He makes a note of this and says no more, and they wave to him, before walking in the direction of the dance floor. They're both okay people, but neither of them affect his temperature.

He eats for the next half an hour or so, casually pushing random items into his mouth and gazing emptily at the floor. He hates himself. He knows Kyle is dancing with Rebecca and he doesn't want to turn to the dance floor to see them, but at some point, he does.

He looks to see her smiling at him, and he's laughing really loudly, as they stumble together, attempting to dance. Somehow he wished it were him stumbling with Kyle. Kyle, with his striped blazer and matching slacks, and his blue bow tie.

The tears were leaving Eric Cartman's eyes before he could even feel them.

He ran from the auditorium, out into the snow, and sat on the curb, sobbing into his chapped hands. His whole body ached and trembled, and he felt even colder than before. He was out there long enough for snow to collect on his shoulders and on the top of his hair, but he didn't care. He was too cold to care.

"Um."

His sobs halted, but he didn't look up to see the person who stood behind him.

"I don't know what's wrong with you," Clyde Donovan sat beside him on the wet, snowy curb. "But I made you some cookies."

Slowly, Eric turned to see him, his eyes wide and vulnerable as they gazed into Clyde's earnest expression. His suit was green, like the color of spring, and an anxious smile crawled onto his tan face. He was holding Eric's cookie tin, and inside of it were a batch of new cookies.

"You made these for me?" Eric choked out softly.

Clyde nodded. "You kind of um... Lost your other ones," he scratched the side of his head nervously.

Eric stared at him for a few moments, before he mumbled out a quiet, "...Thank you."

Clyde's face lit up in a smile, and Eric jolted at the sudden warmth that genuinely happy smile gave him.

_He's smiling because of me._

"Hey um, the dance is still going on." Clyde laughed a little awkwardly. "Do you maybe want to...?"

A helpless grin formed onto Eric Cartman's face, and he felt his body begin to heat up. He nodded and took Clyde by the hand, leading him back inside. He felt the seasons within him change, and he knew that he wouldn't have to worry about melting Clyde when he danced with him or even kissed him on the cheek.

That was the day that, for Eric Cartman, South Park became warm.


End file.
